If Christopher Nolan shot every action scene in this movie like he did the hotel lobby fight sequence – rather than simply relying on quick cuts to cheaply juice the excitement level – it would be just about a completely perfect film; as it is, we must settle for very, very good instead.

And yes, excellent movie. Other than your point, and the fact/s that I found myself wishing I could (a) understand more than half of what Mr. Watanabe said (because of volume, not accent) and (b) tell who was who in the snowsuits at any given moment, it was just about perfect.

I always assumed the choppy fights in the Dark Knight films was a workaround– even though the new costumes are more flexible than the ones used in the Burton/Schumacher days, no actor (or stuntman) is going to be able to fight as quickly and dexterously in them as we imagine Batman fights.

As I finally saw the film, the one sentence I would use begins with the word intense and adds the word OMFG did they mix that ceiling dance scene of Fred Astaire’s with the Matrix and ends with the realization that Nolan made this film to ensure that kid from Third Rock From The Sun gets a Supporting Actor nomination.

The dialogue did get a bit lost at some points, which made it a bit tougher to follow exactly what they were trying to do. That said, I love the sound design for the noise the guy’s head made hitting the windshield alone. Tactile!

I think, though, that a perfect movie would probably not have muffed the physics of the elevator sequence, and would, even more importantly, explained why they couldn’t just switch off the machines, instead of doing all of that co-ordinated dropping in the first place.

Also, how do they fall asleep so fast, if not through the use of a sedative, which they tell us is unusual and extra dangerous?

@Eric, getting into spoiler territory here, but I couldn’t figure out how what happened in a “higher” level of the dream affected what happened in the next level down. I mean, if the “kick” works because the inner ear is unaffected how does a kick in a dream work at all, since nothing is actually happening to the inner ear at all.

As for the “instant dreaming,” well, they are professionals maybe it’s some sort of meditative training, or a side effect of the addictive properties of the shared dreaming state. Of course, none of that explains how Ellen Page’s character can do it. Maybe it’s the machine.

The problems I have stem from the technobabble that we do get, so I guess it is wise that there’s not more. I’m indebted to the discussion attached to the “Dissecting Inception” article at Cinematical for some of the details, but a lot of this stuff was bugging me while I watched:

1) If the machine keeps you under, such that you can’t voluntarily wake up while there is “time left on the clock,” why not just switch off the machine to wake the dreamers? If we were able to assume that the machine put the dreamers under and synched them up but then became completely passive, my disbelief would have been more easily suspended. The movie needs a reason for the dreamers to be stuck in the dream, but instead of raising and then dropping the point of the dream machine’s clock, why not just rely on the sedative angle?

2) The business with the kicks was inconsistent. Why did they have to plant charges on the final level? The kicks as demonstrated earlier operated from the level above (dunking the sleeping person in the tub, for instance). I didn’t twig to this exact problem while watching, but did I feel that there was something funny going on with the concept that made me lose faith in the movie and want to check it.

3) My mental arithmetic is terrible, but some people say that, given the time dilation factors stated on screen, there wasn’t enough time for all of the hotel shenanigans. I don’t remember the numbers, and this one didn’t bug me during the show.

You can excuse some of the problems by saying that the movie’s following a certain dream logic: looking back on it, you see problems that weren’t (supposed to be) evident moment to moment.

My assumption was that the charges on the final level were required not as a kick (as that came from the second-level elevator), but rather as a way to dismantle/unravel the dream itself upon completion of the mission. As for why this would need to be done… I don’t know; and it also brings in the whole fourth level/limbo thing, so… Damn, it sounded so plausible in my head.

Also, the multiple dream levels was exactly how I thought the third Matrix film should’ve gone.

A perfect movie wouldn’t have spent so much time dangling awesome possibilities in front of the audience and then explaining why we’re not allowed to have them.

A perfect movie wouldn’t have followed “You can gain crucial insight’s into the dreamers subconscious by talking to any of these disposable mooks!” and “You can change the environment and the very laws of physics to suit your whims!” with “But never, ever, ever do either, because that will draw too much attention to yourself.”

A perfect movie wouldn’t have followed “The dreams get more unstable the deeper you go into them!” with “… unless you have this magic serum, which luckily, I can manufacture in bulk.”

A perfect movie wouldn’t have expressed dream-based conflict strictly in terms of tiresome action-movie-cliche gunfights and brawls. (Though in the case of the hotel, at least it managed to provide an appropriately awesome dream-like setting.)

A perfect movie would have embraced the glorious and bizarre anti-logic of its environment, instead of spending so much time and energy hiding from it.

On the balance, I actually thought it was a good movie; just one that was annoyingly timid, lazy, and uncreative when it should have been blowing my ass away.

There’s a lot more standing between this movie and perfection than a few editing choices.